


getting lost in the echoes

by someonelsesheart



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, Marriage, but it's not really followed through with, love isn't easy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6870232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonelsesheart/pseuds/someonelsesheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In between Finn and her marriage, she remembers Lexa with her small smile and sparkling eyes, a promise of salvation. She thinks sometimes she hears echoes of their love in the house, the way it slowly fades out until there is only silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	getting lost in the echoes

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this about three months ago and forgot about it entirely, but hey. I did at least two sentences of editing. It's fine.

If things went as they were supposed to, they wouldn’t be here.

Clarke sits with her legs hanging over the side of the roof. It’s fucking freezing, and she’s only dressed in a thin jacket, but she really can’t bring herself to care. She looks up at the stars, which are beautiful and maybe a little mocking.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She ignores it.

If things went as they were supposed to, she wouldn’t be here. She’d probably be living with somebody like Finn Collins in a nice painted house with a white picket fence and, God, a Toyota or something. Finn probably drives a Toyota. It’s probably burnt orange.

Clarke isn’t with Finn and his burnt orange Toyota. Instead, she’s sitting on the roof of their apartment building freezing her ass off, because she fell in love with Lexa Woods instead.

Her phone rings and it begins to rain and she doesn’t move.

**-**

It begins like this:

There is a girl who is scared of the world, and another girl who is scared of nothing at all. And Clarke hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours.

“I hate my degree,” she tells the only other girl in the library with her, who looks like she might be drifting off.

The girl sits up straight and looks around frantically. When she finds Clarke, she says, “Why are you here, then?”

“I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours.”

“Ah. I cannot remember the last time I slept.”

Clarke smiles a little. “I’m Clarke.”

“Lexa.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Clarke says suddenly, impulsively.

“That is a terrible idea. I have an exam in two days.”

Some drunk kids stumble past, laughing. Clarke doesn’t even know what she’s reading about anymore. She says, “Please.”

Lexa stares at her for a long moment. Then she stands. “Fine. Just because I need coffee.”

They don’t grab coffee, because there’s nowhere that sells remotely decent coffee open at 1.30AM on a Tuesday morning. Instead, they find a shitty diner and have shittier burgers. Clarke falls asleep on Lexa’s shoulder on a park bench after trying to kiss her and slumping forward in tiredness instead.

She wakes up back in the library, which means Lexa must have _carried_ her there, which, God. Clarke does love a woman with muscle. She’s wrapped in Lexa’s jacket and there’s a note stuck to her forehead that says a number and _Call me if you want._

Clarke punches the air with a grin and ignores the weird looks she gets from the students filtering in.

-

Clarke does call. She calls and they go on a date, and then another, and Clarke falls in love with the girl who’s scared of nothing.

She finds out that Lexa’s a political science major and that she likes indie music. They go to see films, sometimes, but usually they end up leaving halfway through because they’re too ridiculous or boring, and Clarke doesn’t know how to do this.

On Clarke’s twenty-first birthday, Octavia throws her a birthday party and Clarke introduces them to Lexa. Lexa is awkward but endearing, a little terrifying, and they love her. Which is good. Because Clarke loves her, too.

This is when she meets Finn, who’s with Raven. They become good friends. He loves her, but she says _I can’t, I have Lexa._ Raven breaks up with him shortly after, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe.

Clarke hasn’t thought about Finn Collins in a long time. But sometimes she wonders what could have been.

-

Lexa fucks like she’s drowning. She sucks bruises into Clarke’s neck and doesn’t apologise. Some nights she doesn’t stop until Clarke’s a begging mess. Some nights there’s something dark in her eyes, something beautiful, something terrible.

“I want to ruin you,” she says, and then laughs.

Clarke kisses the corner of her smile and lets her.

-

On Clarke’s twenty-third birthday, she drunkenly asks Lexa to marry her.

Lexa says _are you joking? Of course not._ Then she realises Clarke’s not joking and says, “Clarke, listen. I love you so much. But I’m married to my job, you know that. One day. But not today.”

On Clarke’s twenty-sixth birthday, Lexa gets promoted to foreign ambassador of something or another, and Clarke is so proud, and Lexa says, “Maybe we should see about that marriage thing now.”

They get married in Spain, with their family and friends there. Even Clarke’s annoying cousin Jeremy comes, with his ridiculous Mohawk and his Lynx deodorant. It’s the best day of Clarke’s life.

-

“Babies are so cute. Aren’t they? Don’t you think? I want children,” says Clarke. “Two, maybe. What do you think?”

Clarke is twenty-eight and Lexa is twenty-nine and they are happy. They live in New York with their cat Snuggles, which Lexa pretends to loathe but secretly has a soft spot for. Even though she thinks it’s a fucking awful name.

Lexa’s eyes go sad. “Clarke. I’ve told you before that I don’t want children. Maybe ever.”

“I thought you’d changed your mind.”

“I have not.”

“We’re still young. You could still change your mind.”

Lexa smiles, in that way that means she’s just humouring Clarke, and says, “Maybe.”

Clarke goes to Octavia and Lincoln’s that night and doesn’t come home until the next day. Lexa just watches her with wary eyes when she does return, says, “Did you have a nice time?”

Clarke thinks of crying in Octavia’s arms, of Lincoln rubbing comforting circles on her back, of the way Octavia had said, “All couples have their problems, Clarke.”

“It was lovely,” Clarke says, and she smiles. She drops her glass into the sink. It smashes to pieces.

This is the beginning of the end.

-

Lexa has to go overseas for a few months. She tells Clarke that it’s not a stable country, that she doesn’t want Clarke to get hurt. “Stay here,” she says. “I want you to be safe.”

Clarke has a job at the hospital working as a surgeon, and she would never be able to get that much time off so suddenly. She lets Lexa go. She sits in the cold empty apartment and thinks about forty-eight hour study sessions.

 _Was it worth it_? she wonders. _Was any of this worth it?_

Thing is, she doesn’t know anymore. She doesn’t know at all.

-

Lexa misses Clarke’s thirtieth birthday party. And Thanksgiving. And Christmas.

Clarke tries not to get angry and drinks a lot.

Octavia says, “All couples have problems, Clarke.”

Raven says, “That’s bullshit, Griffin, you should divorce her ass.”

Clarke does nothing at all.

*

It’s a Tuesday when Clarke runs into Finn Collins in the mall. Lexa’s away again, and Clarke had been looking for an anniversary present. She’s got a whole thing planned for the night Lexa gets back, which is the day of their anniversary: a picnic under the stars, with fancy steak and flower petals.

“I was actually on my way to Starbucks, if you wanted to join me,” Finn says.

Clarke thinks about denying. Then she thinks about the empty apartment, the cat glowering at her for not being Lexa enough, and says, “Sounds great.”

They talk for two hours and at the end, Finn says, “Here’s my number. If you want to, I don’t know, catch up again or something.”

Clarke thinks about calling. But she doesn’t.

Of course she doesn’t.

(In between Finn and her marriage, she remembers Lexa with her small smile and sparkling eyes, a promise of salvation. She thinks sometimes she hears echoes of their love in the house, the way it slowly fades out until there is only silence.)

-

The night of their anniversary, Clarke packs everything into a picnic basket, dresses up in her best dress and does her make-up, and she waits.

She gets a call at eleven that night.

“I am so sorry,” Lexa says. “There was an emergency. I know you had something planned for our anniversary. I’m really sorry, baby, but I’ll be back tomorrow morning and we can –”

Clarke sits there, tear tracks down her cheeks, an empty glass smeared with red wine on the table. She’s still in her best dress. “Forget it,” she says. “Don’t bother coming home.”

She hikes up her dress and stands. She mopes around the house for two days and Lexa doesn’t. She doesn’t come home.

Clarke finds an old bottle of vodka in the cupboard and drinks half of it in two hours.

And she calls Finn fucking Collins.

-

Finn is waiting for her with a smile and a bottle of wine, which they both drink in fifteen minutes. When he kisses her, she’s expecting it, and she kisses him back for a long moment, her fingers catching at her sleeves. He feels warm and hard and familiar, and he wants her so much – she knows he would love her in a permanent way, with a stable life and the family Lexa can’t give her.

She feels nauseous and stumbles back.

“I can’t,” she spits out. “I’m sorry.”

She runs down the corridor and out the door. She caught a taxi here, but she walks the five miles home. It rains and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t fucking care anymore.

-

When she gets back the apartment building, she doesn’t go into their apartment. The stars are still out when she gets to the roof, and the rain is still falling in earnest, and it’s absolutely freezing.

So here she is.

And if things went as they were supposed to, they wouldn’t be here.

But things rarely go as they should.

So, _fuck,_ here they are.

Being sober doesn’t taste nearly as good as the harshness of vodka at the back of her throat, and being hungover is even worse. Sober tastes like fucked up, like unclean, like _you just cheated on your wife, what is wrong with you?_

Clarke sits there for an hour thinking about leaving. Not just leaving this roof, which is cold even as the sun begins to rise, but leaving altogether. Leaving Lexa, getting a divorce and moving somewhere new.

London, maybe? Or somewhere really far, like New Zealand. She hears there’s a lot of snow there. Clarke likes snow.

What is she staying for, anyway?

Except it’s like this: She thinks about leaving.

And she realises there’s nothing she wants less than to leave Lexa behind.

She hears the trapdoor to the roof open and flinches. Lexa says, gently, “Please move away from the edge, it is so dangerous.”

“I’m thinking, Lexa, I’m not going to throw myself off the building.”

“Please, Clarke.”

And because Clarke is weak and she has a soft spot for pretty girls, she moves away from the edge.

Lexa looks a mess. Her hair is bedraggled and pulled back into a bun. She’s dressed in a pair of leggings and an oversized shirt, and she’s not even wearing a coat. She’s going to catch hypothermia.

“You’re going to catch hypothermia.”

“I did not think to bring a coat,” says Lexa. “Raven says you kissed Finn.”

Clarke suddenly feels guilty, because even though she told Lexa not to come home, it wasn’t like they were _broken_ up or anything. It’s infidelity, but Lexa’s been cheating on her for years with her work and it doesn’t justify it, no, of course it doesn’t, _but._ But it hurts, fuck, it hurts so much.

Clarke says quietly, “It was a shitty thing to do, and I’m sorry, Lex. But I hated it, I felt so awful that I came home. Hence the roof sitting in the rain.”

“I’m not angry about Finn. Raven told me he said you pushed him away. It was my fault for driving you to him in the first place.”

“What are you doing here, Lexa?”

“I love you,” Lexa says, and her eyes are too bright. “I love you, Clarke, and I have since you convinced me to go to a diner with you at 2AM. I love you more than anything in this world, and I’ve asked for three months off, and I know it’s not enough but I want to make it up to you and –” She swallows. “Before I met you I didn’t know if I could ever love anyone in a forever way. I’ve never been a relationship sort of person, which I guess you must know, but you were there and full of so much love and how could I not fall in love with you?”

Lexa is panting now, eyes wide and shiny. “I’ve been terrible to you, Clarke.”

Clarke wants to cry, because she’s been married to a woman she barely even knows for years now and she doesn’t even know where to start. But she wants to try. She needs to try.

“Maybe you should start by taking me on a date,” Clarke says.

“Clarke Griffin,” Lexa says, and _God,_ she’s crying. _Lexa’s_ crying. “Will you go on a date with me?”

“I don’t know, I heard you’re a bit of a player, Lexa Woods,” says Clarke, and she laughs through the tears.

“Is that a yes?”

“Fuck you, Lex, of course that’s a yes,” Clarke says, and then Lexa’s kissing her.

It’s not perfect, but it’s something. Maybe the start of something good. Something better.

Clarke kisses her back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> catch me at dontholdthiswarinside.tumblr.com


End file.
